Honey, I'm home!

These days, everyone seems making lists. ROS, Prad and I made our ‘perfect partner’ lists. Sahil made a 'what I would do for my wife' list.

So I decided to wash my hands in the flowing Ganges (Sheesh that was such a bad Chapaat-type joke, I know!) and make another list. Having lived my single life with a bunch of different kinds of flatmates - both guys and girls, I’m actually looking forward to the day when I wouldn’t be sharing a house with random people, but actually living in my 'home' with the one I love.

So here it is -- a list of characteristics that my dream house would have, and how I would make it ‘home’.

• There will be two huge bean bags in the living room in front of the TV screen (the biggest LCD screen they have in the market in the year that I get married) where my guy and I will chill and watch movies and ‘Friends’ and ‘Scrubs’ and ‘That 70s show’ and ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ and ‘SATC’ (ok he can skip this one!) with huge packets of sour cream and onion potato chips, nachos and super-hot dip.

• Our bed will not have girly bedcovers. We will both pick and decide on the colour so he doesn't feel like I've taken over. (Actually I would have taken over, but he shouldn't feel it.) There would be no posters on the bedroom walls.

• I will need a separate room for my shoes. I will have about a hundred shoes (yes, I'm reasonable) and my (hopefully geeky) husband will program the shoe room such that all I will need to do is flash a dress in front of a little sensor on the door of the shoe room, and the reader will match it to the shoes. A little monitor will display a photograph of the shoes, and I will press 'yes' on the touch screen menu. A flap will open and the shoes will be presented to me by a very polite mechanical arm. If I choose 'no' on the menu, it will show me the next best match, and so on.

• There will be a huge guestroom with an attached bathroom for parents/in-laws/guests. I will have one of those mobile wooden mandir thingies, so that if my parents or in-laws visit for long vacations (anything less than a month is unacceptable to me), they don't have to give up on any of their usual routines just because I'm not religious.

• There should be a gym near our house. We will go there together and he will give me tips on how to tone my arms without getting the Women's Wrestling Federation look. Or there could be a treadmill at home hooked to the TV, with a dynamo that would run the TV. The TV will go off if insufficient energy is generated so we will both have to work out really hard if we wanna watch something while we work out.

• My guy will be the ruler of the TV remote. He can watch his game or race or whatever he wants. Whenever. I will subscribe to at least one Hindi channel, even though I doubt I'll have time to watch it.
  

• There will be a huge cabinet with all my Bollywood DVDs arranged alphabetically. I will lend my movies to friends and my digital library system (designed by you-guesssed-it!) will record who borrowed what. And yes, there will be due dates.

• There will be a recreation room which will house a karaoke system, a musical keyboard, video games (if my guy is into them), a Pictionary set, badminton racquets, and other such stuff. There will be a shelf in a corner with all the photo albums from pre-digital-camera days.
  

• A bathtub is such a luxury. I want a really big one, really HUGE, in fact, big enough for two people (don’t read too much into it now, this is a family blog).

• I'll have my favourite flowers - pink and white gerberas - in glass vases all over the house.

• No pets, please. Pets shed hair, they pee and poop all over the place. And they die too soon, leaving you heart-broken. Also, if I have pets, I can't execute my grand biannual travel plans.

• Hopefully, I will have a little lawn in front of my house with a fence, which I will paint myself. But if I have to live in a condominium, I'd at least like to have a couple of plants around the house. I will grow my own herbs like coriander and mint, and perhaps a chilli plant too. My Dad, the guy with the greenest fingers in the whole world, will give me tips on my little garden.

• The kitchen will be huge. My guy will not interfere with the dishes when I am cooking them. I promise not to interfere in his cooking either. If he wants to cook, that is. Dinner, when at home, will always look fancy (complete with garnishing) and will be accompanied by water served in wine glasses, not ordinary ones. After dinner, we will do the dishes together. And oh, I will buy that 86-piece cutlery set I saw last year, to use when I invite friends over for dinner.

• I will obviously have more clothes than him and hence will get the bigger closet. I will also get the huge dressing table with all my girly stuff. One of the drawers will have a stack of stupid girly magazines, which I will flip thru as I soak my feet during my monthly pedicure.

• I will do rangoli in the house every Diwali. He'd better like it!

• The beach should be within walking distance, where I will go and sulk after fighting with my guy.

• The couches in the living room should be very comfortable because poor guy's gonna have to sleep there when I drive him outta the room after a fight. He should wake up with a kiss from me, not a neck sprain or a backache, you see.

• We will only have one car because I won't (read 'can't') drive. My guy will have to drop me to work.

• I need a separate computer for my blogging(if I'm still blogging then!) and a desk to write books for children. These can be housed in a mini-library filled with my guy's (geeky?) books. We will not talk in the library but quietly do our work instead. So if I absolutely have to sulk and I’m too tired to go to the beach, I will go and sit in the library. If my guy follows me and tries to manao me, I will just point at the sign on the wall that says ‘Please maintain silence in the library.’
  

• If he wants to have a boys' night, he needn't worry about me. I'll find ways to make myself scarce. And I'll help the poor thing clear up the place the next morning.

• If our coming-back-from-work timings are going to be different, there should be a way of indicating to the person who comes in later, that the other half is already in the house. Some kinda sign somewhere, that says the moment you turn in the keys and enter, "Honey, I'm home."

Well, I may have gone overboard with a lot of stuff, but I do believe there's a lot of executable stuff in there. And we will do it together.

Perhaps he will have a list too. I need to look at that. :)